The days since the ceremony have been sweet. We reflect, process, and share what this past year has meant to us as much as we are emotionally able. Life has slowed down, routine has set in, and Hannah and Hope keep us grounded and moving.
I pondered much the will of God during my sick days.
As I reflect on my entire life, I wonder how much of it I have "messed up". I especially question what I have done to affect or even cause my difficulty to conceive children. Because, I know that in God's original design, poly cystic ovarian syndrome would cease to exist. If this condition did not exist, then I would have never had to go to the fertility doctor. Then, maybe, I would have never become pregnant with seven children to then lose them all. Then, perhaps, my sweet girls and husband would not hurt the way they do. Because, possibly, I have caused all of this, the worst of which is my family's pain.
This is the dialogue that reels in my brain and aches in my heart.
I have learned that God is great, mighty, and beyond my comprehension. I find it fascinating that God, in His sovereignty, allows things to happen that are against His moral standards in order to ultimately bring Him glory. He is in control of all things and yet I still have constant decisions to make that affect my life and the lives of others. This blows my mind. I am pretty sure it will continue to do so until I meet God face to face.
The Bible reveals and theologians speak of two wills in God or two ways of Him willing. These wills have been termed as God's sovereign/efficient/secret/decretive will and His moral/permissive/revealed/preceptive will. I share the same desire as Howard Marshall when he said that "we must certainly distinguish between what God would like to see happen and what He actually does will to happen, and both of these things can be spoken of as God's will."
The Scriptures lead us again and again to affirm that God's will is sometimes spoken of as an expression of his moral standards for human behavior (God wills for me to depend on Him alone to meet all my needs, Exodus 20:3) and sometimes as an expression of his sovereign control even over acts which are contrary to that standard (I fail at this every day, and yet somehow, God uses my sin for His glory and ultimately my good, Romans 8:28).
Scripture definitely portrays God willing something in one sense which he disapproves in another sense. The most compelling example of God's willing for sin to come to pass while at the same time disapproving the sin is His willing the death of his perfect, divine Son.
The betrayal of Jesus by Judas was a morally evil act inspired immediately by Satan (Luke 22:3). Yet in Acts 2:23 Luke says, "This Jesus [was] delivered up according to the definite plan and foreknowledge of God." The betrayal was sin, and it involved the instrumentality of Satan; but it was part of God's ordained plan. That is, there is a sense in which God willed the delivering up of his Son, even though the act was sin.
[Christ's suffering] could not come to pass but by sin. For contempt and disgrace was one thing he was to suffer.
-Jonathan Edwards
The Apostle John expresses his theology of God's sovereignty with the words, "These things happened in order that the scripture be fulfilled." (John 19:36). In other words, the events were not a coincidence that God merely foresaw, but a plan which God purposed to bring about.
Behind this complex relationship of two wills in God is the foundational biblical premise that God is indeed sovereign in a way that makes him ruler of all actions.
The heart of man plans his way, but the Lord establishes his steps.
Psalm 16:9
So, here I am.
Has my behavior diminished the goodness of God's plans for my life and the lives of my family members? Did my stress in college and after delivering Hope (which both led me to ultimately lose physical body weight) change me in such a way that has lessened the joy that God desires me to have right now? If I would have run to Him more or in a "better" way then, would I be experiencing the sorrow I have now?
These are very hard questions. These are very real questions that I know I am "allowed" to ask. But even when I ask them, I sense God chuckling at me, not with a smitten grin, but with His arms wide open and tears of love and genuine care running down His face...
I conclude that the complexity of the divine mind is such that God has the capacity to look at the world through two lenses. He can look through a narrow lens or through a wide-angle lens. When God looks at a painful or wicked event through his narrow lens, he sees the tragedy or the sin for what it is in itself and he is angered and grieved. "I do not delight in the death of anyone, says the Lord God" (Ezekiel 18:32). But when God looks at a painful or wicked event through his wide-angle lens, he sees the tragedy or the sin in relation to everything leading up to it and everything flowing out from it. He sees it in all the connections and effects that form a pattern or mosaic stretching into eternity. This mosaic, with all its (good and evil) parts he does delight in (Psalm 115:3).
-John Piper
Therefore, I affirm that God loves the world with a deep compassion that desires the salvation of and utmost joy for all men. God does not want me to battle infertility.
Yet, I also affirm that God knew from before the foundation of the world that I would battle PCOS. God knew that I would make the decisions I made when I made them. He could have stopped me, but He didn't. Nothing I have done has surprised Him.
Now, I must determine if God's will for all to experience His fullness of joy (John 15:11) is restrained by his commitment to human self-determination (as if we have control over parts of His will) or whether God's will for all to experience nothing less than His full joy (John 16:24) is restrained by His commitment to the glorification of his sovereign grace.
This tension is extremely complex and centuries-old and not an EASY one to make sense of on this side of eternity. I am a fumbling idiot trying to do so in this post. But I will ... I do ... hold fast to what the Spirit whispers inside of me which the Holy Scriptures confirm.
What God wills MORE than my full joy is the manifestation of the full range of HIS GLORY in wrath and mercy (Romans 9:22-23) and MY HUMBLING so that I enjoy giving all credit to God for my salvation (1 Corinthians 1:29) and sanctification (1 Thessalonians 4:3).
I've messed up, a lot. I have made too many poor decisions today already. I will never arrive. But He loves me now, still. He doesn't just love some future version of me. He has been in control the whole time and where I am today is nothing but a product of His glorious grace.
What can I say? What can I do? But offer this heart O God, completely to you...
But one thing I do: forgetting what lies behind and straining forward to what lies ahead, I press on toward the goal for the prize of the upward call of God in Christ Jesus.
Philippians 3:14
I press on because the fight - this fight - is worth fighting.
*As I wrote this entry, Brittany Maynard took her life. Brittany was the same age as me and found out in January of this year (the same time I began fertility investigations) that she had brain cancer. Oh, that she would have known truth and hope.
** The flow of thought, scripture, and theology of this post is borrowed From Still Sovereign: Contemporary Perspectives on Election, Foreknowledge, and Grace by John Piper.